


First Breath

by maevestrom



Category: Kirby - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers
Genre: AU, Alone, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Christmas, Christmas Caroling, Christmas Party, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hunting, Music, Oregon - Freeform, Silence, Writing, beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 20:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14679348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevestrom/pseuds/maevestrom
Summary: "Life after Purin was infested in silence." Meta Knight tries to start life again after a tragic death, but the only thing that registers to him is the only other person who doesn't say anything in the small group of fellow grievers, and the fact that all he wants is to hear the voice of his beloved again





	First Breath

Life after Purin was plagued by silence.

 

I used to write songs I knew would sound lovely on her voice. We were united, king and queen of a small musical empire that might as well have been a fairy tale kingdom. When I lost her, the dream was shattered. Only fairy tales have happy endings.

 

Now I have nothing to write, because I know my words will never pass through her voice again. Like the house we once shared, I am also empty.

\-----------

Every room I walk into is a wasteland. Even the most crowded room is empty.

 

The living room of my long lost father's old house is no exception. People are hard at work stringing up garlands, Christmas lights, and a copious amount of mistletoe that I avoid like landmines. They’re all conversing about various holiday traditions I have long forgotten, with plans to make this season one to remember. No one notices me, because they have more important things to do.

 

I’ve heard when you’re going through hell, you keep going, but even as I get to know these four strangers that I’ve let into my life, I still have no clue where I’m going. It seems like pouring all of their energy into Christmas and its empty tradition helps them focus their energy away from their grief. Zelda whistles a holiday tune as she strings up the mistletoe. Samus makes sure the lights she dragged out of the shed aren’t burnt out. Gaiman dusts off the Christmas tree of any leftover dirt and foliage. I can barely contribute, only watch as they run around in this old house, trying to bring some color in my world.

 

Then there’s you, floating through the room like you were never there.

 

You pass me for a brief moment. We don’t talk, but you hand me a garland. The look on your face is guarded and blank. The silence of our interaction is stronger than the chat of the others I’ve long since muted. I look back at you as you leave. You don’t give me the same courtesy. Without you, the room feels like the surface of the sun.

 

As short as I am, I barely can reach the ceiling even with a ladder. I still feel a dull ache in my leg, but thankfully it works, and I do my part. At times I am frustrated at how damaged one incident could leave my body, but I am still alive, whether or not I am better or worse for it. After I am done, I scan the room for you. You’re gone; I expected no less, but I still have the nagging wish that someday, you’d stay and wait for me, or at least exchange a greeting.

 

Silence takes over my life again. I desperately yearn for some distracting background noise to assuage my nerves. In the depths of sound, I can hear the smallest, most humble jingling of a bell. I don’t even bother to look around. I close my eyes, unsure of whether or not I preferred the silence. The silence brings nothing, but even the most innocuous noise can bring back everything.

\--------

_I look a fool; a small, sturdy man of forty-one dressed in combat boots, black winter garments, and a garish red Santa hat that Purin placed on top of my head. Every step I take is punctuated by a small, tinny bell, making me sound like a Salvation Army volunteer outside of a grocery store. I try not to visibly sulk, but I would much rather be inside enjoying the warm fire and having someone else sing the holiday music to me rather than singing it myself._

 

_Purin giggles as she watches my dour walk. “Fe, fi, fo, fum,” she teases with a giggle as my steps leave typhoons in the thin layer of snow along suburban streets. “Come on, you look like someone spilled your coffee.”_

 

_I shrug. “Far from my intentions. I simply do not wish to expose helpless civilians to my voice.”_

 

_She gestures dramatically to the group of carolers we trail by mere footsteps. “There’s like five of us here,” she points out. “I’m pretty sure your voice, as fine as it is, won’t be too exposed.”_

_  
_ _“I should hope.”_

 

_She frowns as my contempt. “Your voice is fine, lovey,” she reassures me._

 

_“Compared to you, I am a wounded frog.”_

 

_“Most people are.” She ends the debate by pulling my cap over my face like a child. “But this voice took ages to make the way it was. It’s supposed to be good. I’d be scared if it wasn’t.”_

 

_I fix the cap, trying not to scowl as we approach the first house. I swallow, far from ready._

\--------

I have no Christmas cards to write except for the formalities. I’m too exhausted to think of something more poetic than incantations of “Happy Holidays, and may all of your aspirations of the season come to pass. -MK,” because if it isn’t going to happen for me, it may as well happen for someone else. I write one for Zelda, Gaiman, and Samus. Then, to each of the friends who have only communicated to the remnants of our pair through condolences and sentiments as empty as those on my cards.

 

After the cards are mostly through, I find that I have avoided writing one name on the final card. I write your name down, fill it with the same hollow season’s greetings, and sign my initials. I look at it, knowing it says nothing when I need to say everything, so I set it aside. I don’t trash it, because it is a small contingency plan, and I’m trying to regain the ability to prepare for anything.

 

I take out a piece of paper. I write your name. No dear, to, or regarding. Just “Rosalina.”

 

I write nothing else. What else can I say to you?

 

I know nothing yet everything at once.

_\---------------------_

Samus finds it odd that I prefer we hunt on snow days, but she doesn’t object. Weapons in hand, we quietly trudge through the snow. Samus wears no jacket, but refuses to take mine. As the snow hits my skin with a chilly, brisk kiss, I realize that maybe she has her reasons, but I feel terrible for letting her freeze. I put my coat back on. Like my own father, I let her make her own decisions, for better or worse.

 

For once, the silence is a gift, not a curse, because it is as nature intended, not as fate surrendered. Neither of us talk outside of necessity. Samus is so much like me, young enough to be my own daughter, but I try and hide how protective of her I am. Her vocalized disgust for people trying to shelter her outweighs my need to have someone to care for. Indeed, as I try and walk through the snow my limbs creak and pop like a broken machine, I feel like I need her support more than I could ever give her mine.

 

Our guns break the silence. We manage to catch a couple of ducks. Like my own father was, she is a clean hunter, no fuss or panache. She hits one, picks it up by its dead legs, and carries it like baggage. We begin to return to the cabin when I see you.

 

You’re sitting on a log, modest white dress fitting your form, white hair speaking of the decades you have watched go by. You have pencils and paper in your lap, yet you do nothing, letting the snow and silence consume you. You enjoy the silence, I simply accept it. I notice when I pass you, you are smiling, a transcendent smile that speaks volumes. It fits our dynamic that has barely been explored. You are the light, I am darkness.

 

Samus taps me on the shoulder. She looks the slightest touch startled, potentially because we ran the risk of shooting you. I’m amazed that she remembered you were here, because it seems like I am the only one to notice you. When your eyes open, I pretend my gaze was never on you. I look away, but I feel your icy blue eyes rest on me, and that likely explains the chills. You slam your drawing book shut and turn away.

 

“Talk to her,” she says, completely upfront as usual, shattering the silence for a moment.

 

I shake my head, and walk off. It takes a second for Samus’ footsteps to follow me. Our feet leave natural signatures through the snow, and what once upon a time connected me to the Earth now makes me feel like I’ve left it a long time ago.

\----------

 _The first house is over, and I barely get away with mumbling a few lines of_ Joy to the World  _. It’s a little easier now that I understand the anonymity I can obtain. Of course, Purin is next to me, high off of the adrenaline singing grants her, arm around my waist. Snow gathers around us on the sidewalks, and every new step takes an extra modicum of effort._

 

_“One house down, forty-something to go,” she plans, the Dr. Frankenstein to my Igor madly surveying the kingdom of suburban houses she will lure to their knees with her voice. “Glad to see you’ve yet to explode.”_

 

_“Give me time,” I reply with a smirk._

 

_She simply pulls my hat down over my eyes once more. The jingle bell is sharp in my ear._

 

_I fix it once more. “You are quite the child when you wish to be.”_

 

_I realize my words too late, and as could be expected it always brings her just the slightest touch down to Earth._

 

_“I apologize.”_

 

_“Don’t,” she says, hand to my face, her voice dark. “We’ve been over the apologizing thing. Don’t apologize for things you can’t control.”_

 

_I almost spit out another one by mistake, but I bite my tongue._

 

_Still, she maintains remnants of a smile. “Well, if you can’t join them, beat them,” she cracks, converting our struggles into a joke that can be brushed off. “Maybe kids on Christmas morning is exactly what we need to be.”_

 

_“If we’re out here long enough, we certainly will be.”_

 

_She kisses the side of my head briskly, sharp enough that I almost don’t feel it until my cheeks have warmed my face._

\----------

I attend the next meeting where the others plan the holiday party. I still have nothing to contribute, but neither do you.

 

As Zelda absently fixes the tree as she has to near obsessive levels, Gaiman talks about the meal, moving as smoothly as his eighty years would allow him to, slowly passing out samples of the duck, cracking “I’m gonna make this duck taste so good Christ will invite himself to his own damn birthday.”

 

The others compliment him. I notice that Samus is fixing the lone string of garland I assisted with, and I wonder if I am becoming the true ghost, my presence known everywhere but my impact negligible.

 

You do not eat your miniscule slice. As the others drift into more active discussion that I do not feel involves me, I watch you slip it under your chair, looking on the others like a mother hen watching her flock dutifully. Your hair is disheveled and not as thick as it was when I entered, part of it draped lazily over one eye. Your skin clings to your bones for dear life. I wonder if you have eaten at all since you’ve arrived here. You are quietly evaporating.

 

When I sense you begin to turn, I look away. I pretend to be invested in the conversation of others. I suppose people find peace in the idea that they have something to care for again. It’s as simple as being distracted. We have lost so much that we are willing to throw themselves into the smallest things and give them so much more meaning.

 

Right now, I can feel the chill of your eye on my body, and it feels like the merciless toll of a thousand winter nights.

 

I feel your presence as it leaves the room, plate in hand, knowing no one will notice except for me; also knowing that like you, I have bound myself to a meaningless code of silence. Suddenly, I myself feel the loss of appetite.

\---------

To hear people process their grief is a funny thing. I’m told it helps, but it feels like I am in a museum watching performance art of others imitating humans.

 

Today Samus is talking.

 

“I thought about it,” she says all too quickly, “and I’m not re-enlisting.”

 

No one speaks. The floor is hers.

 

She says the military is just not for her, and it’s brought a lot of death. Her words are casual, like it means nothing, like recovering from another dead friend is just the most mundane thing she’ll do all day. Like all it takes is a cold shower for you to reach a conclusion and start over.

 

I am happy for her, so I applaud, happy to know that she is safer. I look to you to see your reaction with more trust than you know. You don’t notice me, but you have tears in your eyes, and shake your head. Your drawing book is in your hand, and absently you write with unrefined strokes, jotting down letters I cannot decipher. I don’t know what I’m missing, so I look at Samus again. She’s accepting a hug from Zelda, insisting this is no big deal while Zelda chipperly preaches about how much progress Samus has made. Yet, now that you seem so aghast about it, I notice the exhaustion in Samus’ eyes, and how much effort it takes for every movement.

 

Suddenly, her lithe recovery seems more like the acceptance of an inevitability. I try and pretend I have never known that feeling.

 

Everyone else speaks. Zelda says today is the first day since Link’s death that she has opened the journal he wrote during his travels abroad. You continue to log your own journal entries. Gaiman says that he has been comforted by having us as a motley crew of a family and wishes to finally accept the contact of his family that he’s avoided since his wife of six decades passed on. As I muse about how seventeen years felt like an eternity now dwarfed by sixty-two, you take note of his own guilt for losing touch with his family.

 

After that, it’s just me and you.

 

I say nothing, out of excuses, still as stubborn as I’ve always been. You close your notebook and leave, your footsteps so soft that they nearly cease to exist. No one reacts, everyone seems to understand, but I see Zelda’s eyes follow your trail with muted disappointment that she shakes off the moment I look at her. I wonder if she has the same sentiments towards me; if she thinks I’ve gathered everyone here to watch their suffering and give nothing in return.

 

I, too, decide to leave. I don’t grab my jacket, and I don’t panic, but the house suffocates me. I have built my own prison, and the snow melts into my skin, it melts my shackles. It’s the closest I get to feeling alive again.

\------------

_“See? It’s fun!”_

 

_I shrug, because I am too proud a man to admit it. Our second house has passed us, and I admit that I enjoyed seeing the family react to our ambush of Christmas cheer. The children wave at us and react in joy, happy to be awake at a novel time despite the anxiety of awaiting fictional gift-givers. I see in their eyes the way I imagine our kids would have enjoyed her voice._

 

_She leans against me as we walk at a leisurely pace. The snow hits us. Instinctively, I guard my hat, and she giggles knowingly._

 

_“No, I’ll leave it be. It’s already starting to snow.”_

 

_“Had I known that, I’d have taken it off.”_

 

_I slip out of my jacket. Even if for a minute, I want the snow to touch my skin. It’s a reminder of childhood, of time spent in a log cabin helping my father chop up wood, hunt for game, and build snowmen when the work was done. A straightforward life created a straightforward person, but I indulge in the snow because it is one of the few things that connects me to past, present, and though I knew not now, the future._

 

_“You’re a dork.”_

 

_I respond by pulling her hat over her eyes, like the child I once was._

\--------

I suppose our paths were always to cross. From the moment others stepped into this empty house that was the meager inheritance from my father, I knew that they were the conductors, and I was only the foundation, quite like my marriage. I let the others try and fill my void as I fail to fill in theirs, letting them solve their grief without my help. I wonder if they only notice I’m here when they sleep in their beds, tucked snugly away in our own corner of the Oregon coast; a quiet, mysterious man keeping watch over them but never offering anything more than stability.

 

I suppose two shadows blend into one.

 

“Hello.”

 

As you stand before me in the living room beside the Christmas tree, I play back all of the silence that we’ve contributed before your simple greeting. You caught my attention because at times I did not know you were here. When I did, I realized what an anomaly you are. You look ageless, indomitable, a spiritual figure in the midst of mere humans. You dress only in thick robes, like royalty, the colors pale blue like the sky, smooth even to the mind’s touch. You never speak, you are as much of a ghost as Purin, yet right now, you hold my hand, and you are real.

 

We look at each other. You are much taller than I, the broken half of a severed couple of admittedly short people. I know not why you hold my hand, or why I move forward again and place mine on your hip in such a way that I’d fall otherwise. This is not according to plan. This does not feel like accurate action. But you accept it with a smile, enveloping me in an embrace.

 

For once, I feel comfortable again. Safe. At once a child and an equal. We stand alone, ghosts in an empty room with no lights. This is our shelter.

 

You lean down to face me. You let me kiss you, and as you return it, the walls come crashing down.

 

A shallow chase to fill a high gone longer than it feels like I had it ends with two of us careening off the side of a cliff. I feel a sting of betrayal, to myself and to those gone. I feel desperate, like I am shamelessly chasing after something worth meaning despite it being meaningless.

 

I break apart. I can’t bear to look at you. I do not feel your chills on my spine, but I am so cold. Your presence feels uneasy, as though I punched you instead of kissed you, like I used you without a care for who you truly were.

 

You walk away, and for once I hear your footsteps clack against the ground. My eyes follow you, and you don’t look back, nearly sprinting out. I haven’t the shame to follow you, and I collapse on the couch nearby, trying to process my own actions.

 

The silence is devastating.

\--------

At times I try and write out what I feel that I cannot say to the others.

 

Silence follows me to the written word, where I have lost my ability to write when Purin’s voice could no longer make my words worth something.

 

I still try and remember her. I am thankful I never saw her destroyed the way I nearly was, because I can still imagine her in her aged beauty. Nearly forty years old, a mere four years younger than I, her skin showing wear and tear, faded lavender hair, wide blue eyes that contained an ocean I could drown myself in and die content. It was not perfect, but it was real. It was more than I could ever have asked for.

 

I still fall asleep to her voice, my mind listening to the lullabies she could only sing to me.

 

I have nothing to say. I only have visions, feelings, sensations I wish I still had. That is why I cannot communicate. Words cannot describe the nothingness I feel. Only silence can.

 

I tried after your kiss to write again, to see if that feeling could give to my memory the sensation of touch I’d long lost. I can still see her, exactly as I always imagine her. Pure, perfect, the support throughout my life that never wavered, even as she changed my heart from a hollow stone to a blooming rose, until life clipped the head off and left me only with thorns.

 

Now it’s been so long that I can no longer imagine Purin’s kiss. I have traded one small part of her away in an attempt to get it back. You feel nothing like her. She was short, and everything about her had strength, volume, power. When I held onto you, it was a miracle that my hands did not disappear to the other side.

 

Yet, you are the only sensation that remains.

 

Is this what goodbye feels like?

\---------

_“I think we’ve nearly run out of carols,” Purin muses with frustration. “So much for trying a new song with every door.”_

 

_“Do they have any suggestions?” I ask._

 

_She throws her hands up in the air. “Take a guess, what do you think?” she asks. “Nope, ‘Purin’s got everything planned, we may as well follow along and have a gay old time’.”_

 

_I feel like I’ve done the same, but the last thing I need to do is compound her stress, as unnecessarily overblown as it may be._

 

_“Perhaps I can think something up,” I offer._

 

_“You would be a god among men if you could help me out.”_

 

_Quietly, I think. I do not have a cellphone on me with any more capabilities than the purpose phones were built for, so I must rely on human memory. Past Christmases, the lingering memories of the holidays of old. The snow hits my bare arm again, as I’ve yet to put my jacket back on. It transports me back to the simplicity of my childhood. Music is universal. It lasts through every time, place, and reality. I remember the one record my father owned and played during the winters. I’d forgotten it as it nearly became background noise, but it sounds like the lyrics of life as I think about it._

 

_“Do you know any Elvis Presley songs?”_

 

_She gets her phone out and furiously starts to search up his library. “You’re really setting the bar high, ain’t ya?” she snarks._

 

_“I think you can manage.”_

 

_She stops, and I kiss her without reservations. She returns it, blushing like I had as she releases me and looks for lyrics. I feel oddly accomplished._

\---------

Presents slowly begin to pile up underneath the tree. Zelda asks me point blank if there’s anything I’d like. I shrug, admitting that I haven’t given it thought. She tries not to show disappointment that I am again at a distance, not involved in the pageantry of the season. She fails; I know this because I have mastered a poker face that has kept the others at as much of a distance as I want.

 

I tell her not to worry about me. I don’t tell her I’m doing more than enough of worrying about myself for her not to occupy herself with me. Her eyes shoot completely open, and words far less rehearsed and measured than her usual contributions launch from her like a cannon.

 

“You should let us worry about you,” she retorts. “It’s what you brought us here for.”

 

I don’t respond, hoping that ends things. She sighs and says she’ll find something for me anyways, whether I want it or not. I admire her tenacity, hidden within a porcelain shell that is stronger than it seems.

 

I notice you are by the tree, running your hands along the spines. The texture is rough, yet its authenticity is comforting. I open my mouth to speak to you, but your gaze nearly turns me to stone. You have put a wall between us so thick even Zelda notices, looking alarmed. I don’t look away, even though I feel like I’ve been shot. Why is that? I was the one to fire the first round.

 

As you let it go and walk away, I smell the forest on your aura, and it tempts me. I try and deny it, but I cannot. It’s enough to get me to follow you, to see if I can say anything that can make you more than a regret. More than a demon that will forever plague my past in spiteful silence, like the pain in my leg that still resurfaces ever since it failed to stop the car in time.

 

I find you walking into the snow. You hear my desperate footsteps just behind you and swivel around. You gather your strength and guard the open path into the forest like a loyal sentient, preventing me from stepping into your world. We are a cold war, frozen in time, and neither of us move. Time stops, and every wasted second tears me apart molecule by molecule.

 

Nothing is said, nothing is done. You breathe out, nearly deflating, and you walk away. I realize I have left myself incapable of fixing things, and that I will go nowhere if this is what I do.

\---------

I continue to go through the motions. I go into Newport alone, looking for gifts. This isn’t like the city I used to live in, but the Coast Town is more than enough for any tourist wanting cheap gifts. Just alongside the water are tons of little shops, cars parked on the sidelines of each of them, making this town of ten-thousand feel like Times Square. The snow is paved, the streets covered in people singing Christmas songs, or walking too closely for strangers, giving and receiving warmth worth more than any gift.

 

I often see families together, and I try not to hate them, but envy consumes me. I feel so greedy, my life going from desiring a family of four, to being content if only we could settle for three, and now simply wanting the pair that defined the greater part of my life.

 

I wander into various stores, tuning out the chatter. I don’t have any music. It’s too jarring of a shift to run through my body. There’s too much of the emotion of others that I don’t dare to match. I find a pair of earrings for Zelda, I find a cookbook that Gaiman didn’t have on his shelves, and I find Samus a jacket, because I can no longer help the fact that I just wish she’d care about herself more than she did.

 

In the store is a newspaper. It speaks of a distant space center I haven’t given much mind to because it just exists, saying that there will be a new wing of the center named after a fallen astronaut and fellow Oregonian named Lucas Stellan. His picture is on the front page; a barely grown young man of high intelligence looking world-weary already, with messy blond hair and freckles dominated by a closed-off expression that made me wonder if he chose his line of work to get away from this planet.

 

I grab and pay for it, reminding myself that the world is full of tragedy. I can’t tell if it’s schadenfreude or the desperation to have someone to relate to that possesses me to read the news. News is nothing but tragedy reported to all, because it seems drastic change rarely happens from positive events.

 

The cashier places the newspaper in a plastic bag, Lucas looking through it into the world he had long since left. I leave the final store and I see you on the outside. There is not a bag in your hand, and there are two in mine. We stop, looking at each other, stopped in our tracks as the city moves around us like planets in orbit. We can’t stop, we can’t let go, but we can’t move. We can’t leave, we can’t stay, we just are. We are ever the same, incapable of progress.

 

You see the newspaper in my bag, and something inside you seems to snap. Your eyes widen, you step back, and you look at me like I am the one who broke you in ways I cannot even begin to understand. I drop the bag, and Lucas’ face disappears into the sidewalk. You jolt, as though my mistakes have stabbed you. You try and catch yourself, wiping your brow and folding your hands together, but you breathe like you’re racing for every last one.

 

I blurt an apology. No formality. None of a writer’s finely tuned language. Just a desperate need to throw an idea forward like a venomous spider trying to damage my inner being.

 

You walk towards me. I turn to stone as you approach me. You take my hand again to see if I react. Unlike your eyes, your body projects enough warmth to make Newport summertime again. I don’t move. I don’t want to make the same mistake I did last time. I don’t want to break you any further.

 

“Do something.”

 

You are unsatisfied. You try and squeeze my hand to get some life out of me, but you have exposed that I have not the boldness to contribute anything. Neither of us have anything to say. We are both stuck in neutral.

 

You close your eyes in defeat and leave, accepting that I might leave your life as abruptly as I barged into it.

 

All I do is walk on the boardwalk next to a river just borne of the Pacific Ocean. I look into the water and into the distance beneath the Yaquina Bay Bridge, endless nothingness ahead of me. It’s beautiful out, yet it still doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t know what to do with it.

\---------

_“Isn’t it beautiful out?”_

 

_I look at the side of her face as we walk together, and I agree. Even now, I wish I could remember exactly as she looked that night. Her hair was graying to spite the pink hair dye, but the graceful lavender was a beautiful compromise. Her eyes never tired, always full of coursing energy. Her footfalls were sharp, powerful, happy to be stepping on the Earth. When she spoke, invisible color filled the sky, dissolving into my skin and making my heart race._

\---------

She was so alive.

 

Now that she’s gone, I fight to remember a time before loss, and I am losing.

 

“Purin” is still all that remains on the blank page to no one.

 

Purin’s memory fades away from the forefront to the endless vault of memories that only I will ever know the key to. These are memories I cannot lose, but cannot burn. Some days I could burn the entire vault- joy, misery, peace, turmoil, anger, love, every last memory- just to get rid of the pain. She’s slowly leaving for good, her ghost kissing me farewell and drifting away, and I am too paralyzed in fear to chase her.

 

Even I cannot stop death.

 

My pen cannot even form a new word. I used to be so good at this. I wrote the lullabies she sang. I wrote the stories she read. I laid the groundwork and she brought life to our plans. Now I am nothing but an empty notebook of untold stories.

 

As I prepare to sleep, her voice is distant. Your hand in mine is the last thing I feel. My dream is an endless amount of time of you leading me through a maze of vague nothingness, which I never find my way out of before I wake. My dreams never satisfy me; I am used to always awakening from them before I get what I want. This is different. Despite being a caricature of my current life, this dream was all too real, and I realize that you dragged me through nothingness because I knew no way out for either of us.

\--------

It’s the eve before Christmas. I wish I was good company that day, but the same as ever, I am quiet and subservient. When people make conversation with me, I return it with stock responses. When people ask something of me, I give it. Yet when people sing Christmas songs, the same small set that are on every blasted year, I still cannot bring myself to sing because I don’t have a beautiful voice like hers.

 

“Does anyone know  _Blue Christmas?”_ Samus asks, smirking knowingly. Zelda slaps her forehead, and Gaiman gives her a playful shove with enough force that he nearly falls over. I should be amused, but every Christmas song sung puts me back into a haze. There’s not one I can cease to hear in her voice. She went through them all and then some, and ever since then all the holidays have produced are words without meaning.

 

I let them sing, recognizing the voices. Samus and Zelda’s voices dance like the prince and the belle of the ball, Samus the foundation and Zelda the spark. I hear Gaiman’s voice, scratchy yet still jubilant, playfully contributing the traditionally female backing chorus. Eventually all the voices fade out, and I remember hers.

\----------

_“I’ll have a blue Christmas without you.”_

 

_Our final song was not without a twinge of sadness, and even I admitted that I was sad to see the night go. What was once a reluctant experience is one I wish I never had to say goodbye to, even though it was nearing midnight._

 

_I offer my amateur baritone, because anything that gives my dear Purin the floor to sing, I will do. Goofy hat, mediocre singing abilities, a shoulder to lean on, a lifelong companion, the words that she inspires me to write to cope with the power of our love, I would do for her to sing._

 

_She doesn’t have the polished, dramatic charm of Elvis Presley, but she sings as clear and as colorfully as the bells on our hats. The others split apart, letting the angel take the floor, while I mumbled my part, barely knowing the lyrics but the melody filling me with every moment of life._

 

_We stop, and I notice the Star of David hanging on a hook outside their door. Feeling even more foolish, I laugh, pulling my hat over my eyes._

 

_Regardless, the matron of the house applauds, and her companion says, “that was lovely!”_

 

_I know. Her voice could part the seas, bring manna from heavens, and bring the dead back to life. That’s why even as everything else fades from her memory, her voice remains._

_\-------_

I close my eyes, letting Purin’s voice drown out theirs.

 

_“And when those bluuuuue snowflakes start falling”_

 

Snowflakes. The feeling of snow on my skin. Something new with every time I left the room. Something growing. Something changing. I can feel it even now.

 

_“That’s when the bluuuuuue memories start calling.”_

 

Her voice brings it all back, her closing song. It’s a flash, I remember everything about her. I remember her standing next to me as we walked through the city, two lonely souls finding light together. I remember the feeling of her body in my embrace, the way she said my name when my lips were on the side of her face. A playful tease, but appreciating my adoration. I remember every situation that mattered, every aspect of our life that hurt and every aspect that healed. Our wedding, the day we found out she was barren, constructing our first album and raising a music career when we could not raise a family. I remember the car ride where we took life as being ever the same before one sudden miscalculation changed everything. I remember the last few moments of our life before the harrowing first few of mine.

 

I don’t cry, but I leave.

 

_“You’ll be doing alright with your Christmas of white, but I’ll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas.”_

_\---------_

_Purin._

 

_The snow on my skin,_

_the laughter of a child,_

_even if not ours, lingers in my mind._

 

_Without you, my sentences have no rhythm,_

_my verses no rhyme_

_but even now I can find their meaning._

 

_I have no one to sing,_

_you no longer have an audience,_

_but my words and your voice will never leave the Earth._

 

_Music is timeless,_

_love is timeless,_

_and through them you are immortal._

\---------

Rosalina.

 

Your unfamiliar name is less intimidating now.

 

I take the letter with your name on it. I realize I can’t finish it because I cannot pre-package any sentiments I have. I cannot express them through words. Yet, you aren’t worth simply a card full of recycled sentiments.

 

Without a fuss, I put the paper in the garbage. It’s irrelevant.

 

I have since gotten you a gift. I take it, and I take a plate. I cover Gaiman’s food in tinfoil, and place it in the bag with your gift, as I leave the house. The lights are dim, and as I leave they’re still singing. I know you’re not here; even as silent and distant as you are, all the Christmas lights in the world couldn’t replace the light of your star.

 

I walk into the snow, measuring every footstep, feeling each one fall like a rock, leaving craters in the snow that’s nearly up to my knees. I know you have to be here. I can feel your light from here. I don’t rush, because I want to take my time. I don’t want to rush. I don’t want to throw all my cards on the table, but I can no longer play with the hand I’m dealt. I need a new draw.

 

I want to write a new song. I just hope you’re still around to sing. I finally have the courage to welcome a new voice, even if it will never sound the same.

 

I eventually find you, sitting on a downed log that I believe you were on last time. It’s been enough time for your jacket to have a fresh layer of snow, and for the paper you draw onto to hold a thin layer of water damage. You don’t look up at me, but the tears in your eyes tell me that it’s not simply snow that has affected the drawing you’ve only recently finished.

 

I nod slowly, accepting that I will now be throwing myself into the lion’s den of grief. I will now listen, and I know I will have to talk in return.

 

I take a seat next to you. You give me that look that sends shivers through my veins that run blood into the heart I’m desperately trying to repair.

 

“Is this your attempt to finally do something?”

 

I sigh, knowing that I’ve started us off on a false note, and that cannot change. Still, I take a deep breath, and I say, “Yes.”

 

There’s a small smile on your face, but your eyes are still glaciers melted as you look at me. You know I’m here, I know you’re here, and I know this is no experiment, no accident of fate.

 

On your sketch pad, a picture of Lucas Stellan looks up at me. This time, he’s smiling, at peace.

 

I take your hand. You let me. We don’t kiss. We still don’t speak. We’re not there yet. We sit there, not interacting until the snow leaves the paper stained enough to manipulate the ink into a mess, and until Purin has finished her closing song in my mind’s ear.

 

You look me in the eye.

 

“Your eyes are like fire.”

 

Your voice is smooth like silk, as comfortable as the feeling of snow is on my arm.

 

You turn the page, and I see myself in an older drawing. I look like the grim reaper, but the drawing is flattering and quite well done. It is like gazing into a mirror, my eyes of brown burning with life. My skin is ragged, my face expressionless, and I stand like the soldier of my own war, but I stand regardless.

 

I reach into the bag, and pull out the plate. I say, “You should eat.”

 

“I know, I must look like death,” you admit. “I apologize if you worried about me.”

 

I shake my head, handing you the plate. “After everything… I have done nothing but worry. I only wish I had found my way to you sooner.”

 

You pick bits and pieces of the food, but you have little appetite, and I know it. I know it’s not an easy fix, so I let it go.

 

“I do not know your journey,” you say, “but I know if you continue to take it alone, you will never make it. Take me with you, and perhaps we will both find our way out.”

 

You are another poet, it seems, because your words speak directly to my DNA.

 

I reach into the bag and pull out your gift. You smile at me, taking the finished sketch pad, shutting it, and placing it in my bag. You take the new one and open it. It’s blank save for a few charcoal pencils, ready for new experiences to draw.

 

“Thank you,” you say. “I didn’t expect this.”

 

I shake my head, much like you did when Samus tried to pass off her grief as nonexistent. I know that I expected something between us, something to tear down the walls. I may as well throw the first stone, even though I am not without sin. We are two imperfect entities trying not to break next to each other, but somehow are stronger for it.

 

You reach into your coat pocket, pulling out your own gift- unwrapped, like mine. I don’t quite recognize it because I am not an expert in electronics, but I’m already intrigued.

 

“Not sure what to do with this,” I admit. You laugh, a subtle, tired laugh, and you turn it on. I notice it came with earbuds, and I put one in. You take the other, and plug the headphones in. You pick an album, and immediately whatever remaining security I had around me falls.

  
I am free. I am not fixed, I am not well, I am not perfect, but I am free.

 

It is a song I’ve never heard, and a song with no voice. The performers are as quiet as we, but speak volumes through string, drums, and melodies united and swimming between each other like Zelda and Samus when they sing and dance. It’s an entirely new song, and I love it.

 

We sit together, arm in arm, the past treasured but the final words written and published. Enjoying a wordless Christmas eve, we open ourselves up to a new song.

 

The name of the album is  _Take Care, Take Care, Take Care._

 

That we shall.

\----------

_I drive us home at 12:30am, Christmas day. We leave the suburbs of Beaverton. Your voice is exhausted, because you give your all every time you sing, and just over fifty songs have left you breathless. You’re asleep, and I’m driving down Canyon Road towards the city center, back home. All that I know are winding roads through the forest, shadows and streetlights, and silence. It’s the last time such silence is peaceful._

 

_I am too tired to drive, but I manage, and we survive this round. It’s luck that I took for granted until I ran out of it._

 

_I glance over at you. You sleep like a child. You’re still smiling._

_\-----------_

It’s Christmas morning. When I wake for it, I feel like I actually have woken up.

 

I hand out gifts I failed to wrap, as I’ve still yet to reclaim any panache I once had. Zelda accepts the earrings with grace, Gaiman claps my shoulder, impressed I found one of the five cookbooks on Earth that he didn’t own at one point or another. I hand Samus the jacket uneasily. She looks at me, puts it on, and smiles without a word. I notice as I walk away she zips it up and wears it even as she sits down.

 

We cross paths under the mistletoe. No slaves to routine, we don’t kiss, but you wish me a good morning. I nod and return it.

 

I put my headphones on, and turn on the album  _The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place._ Like the last album, it’s nothing but wordless music that says everything I could never have the skill to write down. I pour myself a cup of coffee and return to the room, watching as you interact with the others. You give Samus a photo album, Zelda a journal, and Gaiman a prepaid phone. I take a headphone out and hear you tell him how easy it will be to contact his family now. For the first time since he’s been here, he’s crying, and embraces you. As the music plays through my other ear, I realize you’ve given us all a fresh start. You’ve given me new songs to play, you’ve given Samus new memories to make, you’ve given Gaiman new ways to connect with old family, and you’ve given Zelda new ways to record what I’m sure will be a successful life.

 

I hope I can give you new things to draw.

 

Hopefully as time goes by I can help put their devices to good use.

 

I remove my headphones, watching the gift-giving and the conversing. You sit next to me, drinking a cup of eggnog. We watch, the knowing ghosts who knew as much as we could simply because we only knew how to observe.

 

You place your hand on my free hand, and take my other earbud. You compliment me on my choice, and we let the first song play out.  _First Breath After Coma._

 

I feel like I’ve awoken from a long one.

 

“So.” I still have not regained the eloquence I once had naturally, but the very sound of my voice unprovoked by the others turns all three heads at once. You turn the music player off.

 

“I want to thank you,” I say. “In the seventeen years that I had been married, my wife always had a desire to stand up for others, to welcome them into our world and care for them. She’d said that she would only feel fulfilled if her life actually meant something to others. We were unable to have children, so this desire was often just a dream. I believe after she passed a distant part of me wanted to carry on that legacy, but the last few months have been so…” My voice cracks, because it was never a voice used to singing, “...challenging, in that I felt nothing at all. I had hoped that inviting your company in, complete strangers I could only hope identified with what I myself could not understand. I have been silent for so long, and I hope you bear with me as I learn to speak, because I finally have been able to acknowledge the benefit your presence has had on me.”

 

The others applaud me. You hold my hand even tighter. I appreciate it.

 

I know outside, the trees are dead, their leaves buried under layers of snow that will melt. Death has become as familiar to be as my own skin and bones, but just as Spring brings the renewal of all that was lost, this Christmas has done to my life.

 

I’m glad you were here to wake me up.


End file.
